


Eulogies

by ToTillAGarden



Series: Davenport Week [7]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, davenport week, death only in the sense of cycles and dying peacefully of old age, his mom is the oc too btw, kravitz and magnus are mentioned but i aint tagging them, oh also theres one line of davenchurch but yall know i ship that already so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 15:01:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12301629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToTillAGarden/pseuds/ToTillAGarden
Summary: "...If I'm trusting them to chronicle this journey, then I sure as hell would trust them to write my eulogy.""Does that make sense?"





	Eulogies

**Author's Note:**

> I did it!!! I'm pretty sure the sun's about to rise but I did it!!
> 
> Day 7 - a free day, but I chose to use it to culminate every Davenport and Lucretia fic I've ever wrote!   
> It's been absolutely amazing to be writing for the past - holy shit, it's been 3 months - I've not only been having fun and working on my skills, but I've also made a shit-ton of new friends and discovered just how awesome you all are, so thank you for sticking with me!
> 
> I'll be back - probably after this mini-arc ends? - with hopefully more to come, but considering it's 6 AM and I've pulled this off for a week, it might take me a bit to recover.  
> But I'll keep responding to comments, so keep sending them!! I appreciate every single one <3

“So, Mr. Captain Davenport, what kind of crew do you think you’ll need?”  
He laughed, but then paused, tilting his head a little bit in confusion. “You know, that’s not actually something I thought about.”  
His mother laughed in return. “I talked to the rest of the board about it - and they decided you can have up to ten people on the ship, including yourself - but they’re giving you the budget to look as far as you need.”  
“Sounds like they’re trying to keep the loss of life to a minimum.” He grimaced. “The budget thing sounds fair, though.”  
“The board’s a bunch of stiff old elves who worry too much.” She said, smiling. “We’ve done our research, and you’ll be back and famous before you know it! But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be thinking about a crew.”  
“I didn’t know I was getting this job until yesterday, Mom, give me a break!”  
“You didn’t _officially_ know you were getting the job until yesterday.” She laughed. “But it was obvious the moment your father found the light and you know it.”  
“Okay, okay, but that doesn’t mean I thought about a _crew,_ or a training program, or an advertising campaign??? I’ve never done this before.”  
“Those last two the rest of the Institute can work on with you. But think about the first one by yourself: There are 12 parts to the planar system, and while most of the time, you hopefully won’t be getting out of the ship, there are parts of it you’re going to want to explore, right?”  
He nodded. “It’d be interesting to see how different other planes are - and maybe even bring some things back home? Merle’s been telling me how excited he is to see plants from the Upper Planes.”  
“So why not ask him to come with you?” His mom, noticing the huge crush her son had on his friend, couldn’t help but push the two together.   
“Well, I was thinking of having everyone go through an application and interview process? Because I know a lot of people who aren’t in the Academies might want to join and don’t want to exclude everyone or turn this into an elitist thing, and only people who really want to be there are going to apply and-“ He took a breath. “I don’t know if he wants to go or if he just wants to make me feel better? Or maybe he just wants me to bring stuff back.”  
“So ask him! Having an application process is a great idea, and if Merle wants to, he’ll apply and then you can accept him.” She smiled. “He could be your biologist in residence - put him in charge of collecting specimens and recording what kinds of life all the planes have on them.”  
“Mom…. Merle can’t write for shit, though.”  
“Davy, don’t be mean -“  
“No, I’m serious! I trust him with the plants if he promises to be professional about it, but if I want to get something published later I don’t want to have Merle writing it. He always writes the things he cares about instead of what people want to hear.”  
“If he promises to be professional?”  
“Don’t ask.”  
“Okay… But if you don’t want Merle to write, then find someone else to do it - I’m sure there are a lot of writers who would love to.”  
“I wouldn’t want just any writer, though.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I want someone who can write _everything,_ you know? I can write scientific papers myself, but to get someone who can get every detail like it’s high school and I’m reading The Scarlet Letter again would be perfect.”  
“So hire a novelist. Have them submit a portfolio along with their application, or give them all the same prompt and have them write something for you!”  
Davenport thought about it for a minute. “Oh - Mom?”  
“Yes?”  
“Do you think it would be too much of a ‘fuck you’ to the board if I had them write my eulogy?”

~

Davenport leaned back in his chair; he was tired, after hours of interviewing, but the thought of nearing the end of his last one for the day made him relax, if only slightly. “I’ve asked you a lot of questions today; do you have any for me?”  
She thought for a bit. “There’s one, though it isn’t very professional-“  
He interrupted her, supplying the answer his mother always gave when he thought he was asking a stupid question. “It’s alright; go ahead and ask.”  
“You asked us to submit, along with the application and portfolio, our own rendition of your hypothetical eulogy.” She seemed nervous, making out every word of the sentence with care - but this, Davenport could tell, broke from her trying to be formal and showed real curiosity. “Why that, of all things?”  
He laughed. “Can I be honest with you for a moment?”  
She nodded.  
“The board of the IPRE limited my crew to no more than ten people, fearing that we might die while on our journey. Yet I disagree - it may be naive of me, but I think that with the proper time and training, we’ll all be prepared for our journey - so I thought I’d ask for a eulogy just to shove it in their faces.”  
She laughed - the first time that day! - and scribbled it down in her notebook, as she did throughout the process.   
“But also,” he added, having thought about it more, “Whatever gets published from this two-month trip will be the result of the life’s work of my whole family, and what we all rely on to make our hard work known. The person who I end up picking for this would have to be one I trust to do it well; and if I’m trusting them to chronicle this journey, then I sure as hell would trust them to write my eulogy.” He recognized the shock in her eyes, noticing her hesitation before writing that all down, before continuing. “Does that make sense?”  
“Yes, it does - sorry, I’m just a little bit in awe.”  
He laughed. “Thank you - there’s nothing to be nervous about, though. Anything else you wanted to ask?”   
She shook her head. “Thank you so much, sir - I’ll hear from you sometime this week?”  
He nodded. “Thank you for coming - Lucretia, was it?”  
She nodded, thanking him again before slipping her journal in her bag, getting up, pushing her chair in, and rushing out of the room.

“You know?” His mother said, having just been briefed about the whole thing. “I like this Lucretia girl a lot - Having her on the team would be as good for her to grow as it would be for you.”

~

When Davenport died the first time, Lucretia wrote his eulogy.  
He was the last one to ever do so, only dying at the very end of cycle 18. The world they had landed in that time was in the midst of a war, and when the Light landed right in the middle of a neutral territory the two invaded and ravaged it like there was no tomorrow; but then when Magnus joined the army to protect the neutral country only to go against his commander’s orders and get arrested, Davenport worked to get him, and the Light, back to him, only to end up assassinated by an enemy sniper as he finished up negotiations.  
And even though it had been 18 years, the cycles weren’t so hard yet and they still had the time and energy to mourn, so Lucretia wrote him a eulogy, and they gave him somewhat of a proper funeral, but instead of burying him or cremating him they put him in the ocean, where he always longed to be. She poured all of her heart and soul into it, writing about how great he was and how he sacrificed everything for his crew and devoted his whole life into the mission, but then ended it by thanking whatever gods existed on this plane Barry was an intern when they built the ship, and had learned how to drive it. And then they all told stories about Davenport and all the fun times they either had with him or had ruined by him, and they laughed about life and saluted him and said they’d see it next year, and Lucretia finished off her eulogy by saying she’d miss him singing in the shower and making sharp turns while piloting the ship to see if they all fell, and then saluted and said she’d see him next year.

~

When Davenport lost his memories, Lucretia wrote him a eulogy.  
She did it to mourn the Davenport he was, knowing that even if she were to ever inoculate him, he’d never be the same again; but she also did it as a way to heal herself. She wanted to remember Davenport in full, noting how illusion magic made him a prankster and how he used to recite the whole Passover Haggadah from memory, how he drew schematics in perfect detail and could fly the ship with his eyes closed, how he had an exact way he liked to trim his mustache and his hair and he knew ten ways to tie a bow tie; anything regardless of size was important, but not only did she write it all down objectively, she took the time to talk about how much he meant to her.  
He inspired her, he wrote, from the day she got interviewed, because while he was a genius and professional and important he was also kind and honest and wanted to stick it to authority in his own way, and every detail she wrote down had a purpose, whether it showed how much he loved to learn from his crew, how much he liked to teach them, or just how much he loved them.

As a leader of an organization, she decided, she wanted to be the person Davenport would have been if the Institute gave him a bigger crew, and even when she became more professional and closed off, having him at her side meant never forgetting who she was and what she stood for.

~

After Lucretia died, Davenport read every eulogy she wrote for him.  
Angus, Magnus and Lup had taken on the roles of funeral speeches, and while he probably never had the same relationship with Lucretia again he learned to find out that with death, memory learns to find the good in a person and not the bad. He had read the first one - it was a part of her application - but he hadn’t read any of the later ones, and, as Lucretia was known for, she had written them all down and kept them all, so he opened her journals and flipped through the pages until he found every single one of them. There was the first, and seven more from each of the cycles where he died, and the one from where he lost his memories, and then another from when he gained them, and Lucretia thought she’d never speak to him again. He read them all, and he found himself crying, at the end, and while he cried a lot of anger and frustration and confusion and, after Magnus died, grief, there was a hint of disappointment in this cry.

That disappointment, he figured out, was at himself - it had been almost two centuries, and it took her death for Davenport to fully comprehend what it was he meant to her.

~

Before Davenport died, he asked Kravitz for a favor.  
He knew it was bending the rules, slightly, but he wasn’t going to die unless Lucretia wrote him a eulogy, and Kravitz, having as much respect for him as he would a father-in-law, granted him that wish. So when he knocked on the door to Magnus’s cabin and explained the situation to Lucretia, she laughed and understood and, while time wasn’t the same in the Astral Plane, took her time to write the best one she could. And so she wrote about that first interview, retelling that story to the world for the first time since the Day of Story and Song hundreds of years ago; wrote about how Davenport trusted her to write his eulogies and how she did so multiple times over; she wrote about how he deserved to come back to his family and come back to glory and his devotion and dedication and strength, how it was Davenport who kept them safe and alive, Davenport who became like a father to them, Davenport who put his family above all else, whether it was his dreams of studying the ocean or the loss of whole planar systems, Davenport who made a ship that ran on the love and connections he had with others because he knew that was his strength.  
And she wrote about how Davenport would want to be remembered, not as perfect and not as a celebrity but as the man he really was, a man who fought and loved but also ran and got angry at the circumstances and sometimes did what he had to do, even if it didn’t seem nice or fair.   
But then, at the end, she went back to the stories of past eulogies, writing about how every time, she tried to write something else, and yet every time, she couldn’t find exactly the right words, the ones that fit best. But when writing this one, she figured it out; it takes multiple stories, and in his case, multiple eulogies, to make a man. A life, in all of its glory, can’t be described in a single speech, whether it’s the first one ever written about him or the thousandth. So, with a bit of help from the material plane, she compiled all ten eulogies into a book, but also found it necessary to summarize them right there, at that moment; and she started from the first, picking the quotes that rang true, and ended in the last, and argued until the very end that every minute it took to have poor Lucy McDonald read it for her was worth it, and if she was really named after her, she’d figure it out someday.

And when Kravitz brought Davenport down to Magnus’s cabin, waiting for his rites to end before doing so, and Lucretia answered the door, Davenport smiled, and they embraced.  
“Lucretia? I don’t know how long ago it was that I last said this, if I ever did, but… I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Aw, gotta love good found family/role model connections....
> 
> Some bonus content, this time: 
> 
> -Davenport, as Taako's de facto dad, and the Raven Queen, as Kravitz's de facto mom, definitely had tea together more than once. Like the chill in-law grandparents type tea. It's one of the few times anyone will ever catch her in human form, because that's how she appreciates it most, but they definitely develop a connection, and Davenport uses that to his advantage.
> 
> If you're looking for something to comment about: tell me to go to sleep? It's 6:21 and while I'm on break this is getting insane.


End file.
